you're attached to everything deadly,
     complacently conceding to blackening lungs and burned brain cells
      and browning gums--

              but it scared the hell out of you that I might be good for you
      and just as addictive

Heartbreak happens in wrinkles
           the crinkles and creases in the corners of your eyes when I make
           you laugh and the lines that cut your cheeks in half when I make
           you smile and the furrows in your forehead when we both don't
           understand why I'll still never be enough

The only division between us is the parting of our lips,
the hovering of lingering fingertips,
the hesitation of tongues unsure of where to go next,
the distance of arching backs peeling away from wrinkled sheets--
the radius of lust and elastic potential.

The only senses of time known to us are intervals of forever, divisions of eternity and multiples of infinity,
the hours between blinks shared from sleepy eyes into sleepy eyes,
mornings spent counting freckles,
measuring the weight of vertebrae wound around each other--
stacking flesh on top of flesh, expanding territory.
The wait between see you next and you're here now,
the seconds streaming together years of my life
that suddenly make sense,
semblances of me strung together with fragments of you--
a collage of existence, a quilt of strewn feelings.
The destiny realized by legs intertwined,
walking towards oblivion under glimmering reflections of our stardust
entities, celestial beings beating carnally to the drumming
of my nails on your back and your grip on my neck.

The only place we've needed is the space big enough
for unapologetic desire and met expectations,
the mountain of affection, each smile straining towards the summit of
yes, more, more,
the bubble around our fantasy, protected from the gritty graveling
of bitter lovers lost, surrounding us with crippling cliches,
the escape of home, mine or yours, ours whenever,
the simple joy of leg room unrestricted, our mess sprawled like Picasso
before us, looking at what we've done to each other--
the masterpiece of two souls lighting their lives on fire, burning the world away with friction,
then blowing it out with suffocating, smothering satisfaction.

What's wrong?
****. Just give up, you know?
Give what up?
The alternative. The second option. The next one. Give up the safety net and the back-ups. I held onto so many halves that I never got a whole.
What are you talking about?
I'm talking about being full of all the empties. And void of the one.
Are you okay?
I'm over it.
Okay.

Blue skies remind me of you-- what an inconvenient heart-string.
Like heartbreak photosynthesis, the sun and the bright clouds burn through me a desire to grow towards you.
What does a flower do when the breeze no longer flirts with its petals?
Where does a bee go when its favorite plant has been picked?
Grass is always greenest after the first snow melts, but you ran from even the first sign of frost.
Am I supposed to hate Spring?
Can I not enjoy Summer?
We shouldn’t have shared with each other the weather.
You selfishly took my sunshine, I need you everyday.

Here, this is yours.
Just take it please.
Yes, it's been in my possession for some time,
and it's been on my shelf and in my life and on my mind
but it's yours, through and through, it's never ever been mine.
I stole it, I own it, I call it by name,
but please take it back, back to where it's never actually been.
I can't hold it any longer, I can't see it each day, it can't be in my life, knowing we're not the same.
It's just another thing taking up space in my life,
space that I've left occupied by the waiting and wasting of an ending absence of you,
hope that all these things would mirror your presence, that you'd be here with it too.
You left a hole in my heart and it hurts like hell,
and this thing is sitting on my desk looking like your smile and aching like your laugh.
I tried to get rid of it but that didn't go as planned. There's no garbage for my feelings,
and I hate how time never actually tells, and your truths had no meaning.
And this poem has no rhythm anymore, it's just a semblance of the nothings you made me feel,
all the stupid dreams and expectations you raised and shattered, and built and broke.
You never told me I was beautiful or that I had stars in my eyes,
and I'm starting to only hear all the things you never said,
and I'm so disappointed in myself for falling in love with those things.
I think I put so much into Us that was never actually there,
like the idea that you loved me, that you maybe possibly cared.
Or that you thought I was lovely, and sharp, and a human being beyond compare,
or that you wanted to climb mountains and buy ice cream and lay on the floor,
and look at the sky and kiss every inch of the skin that only ever felt like raindrops before the storm that was 'more'.
My heart was yours before I met you and that truth is heavy.
Your silence is killing me. I wish that you knew you were crushing me beneath the weight of your indifference, your contentious contentment with my dimmed spirit.
There is no romanticized silver lining to your heel on my soul.
So take this book, I got it for you and I don't want to read it or see it or have it.
I don't want this heart in my body, or this pit in my stomach,
and all of the We, the Us, the You and I, is a horribly sweet memory because
every word you ever spoke to me was a year long "goodbye".